Botanical Lily No. 7820. Photograph by Tricia McKellar

Reverb 10 is community of bloggers reflecting on 2010 & manifesting what’s next. Daily writing prompts guide us. Dec 2nd prompt:

Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

What do I do each day that gets in the way of my blogging? Bouncing to & from this & that. Reacting. Not looking at the big picture & seeing how my blog might fit in my big dreams. Telling myself that I don’t have time for a long post and then not writing the short post.

Reverb 10 is helping me reprogram. This is a commitment to 31 posts in 31 days. Terrifying.

But possible.

Reverb 10 is community of bloggers reflecting on 2010 & manifesting what’s next. Daily writing prompts guide us. My response to the Dec 1 prompt to choose one word for 2010:

One word to sum up my 2010. Doubt. And I don’t mean that in a downer sort-of way… Deep doubt can be debilitating. Or maybe it’s a signal to get clear on life. I had a big doubts in 2010– Where was my art going? What was I doing with my art business? What was my safe path? Were my dreams possible?

Were my big dreams too scary?

Now that I’ve gotten to the heart of the matter, the rest is easier & harder. My big dreams are scary, but not too scary. I’m planning to fail a lot in 2011. And to have wild success. My word for 2011: Expansion.

Image: Water & Sky. Photograph by Tricia McKellar

Dream of Water & Sky, No. 6527. Photograph of Bogue Inlet at the North Carolina outer banks. Original photograph with digital painting.

crocus

Photograph of crocus from a trip to the arboretum yesterday. We’ve had a few really nice days lately. And I’ve had a few days off work– a real weekend. My spirits are up! :)

postcards from the garden in winter series

postcards from the water & sky series

And I have new postcards! They are in my shop and on sale!

Garden in Winter No. 1246, TTV Photograph

Garden in Winter No. 1233

Some of my photography series come together slowly. I take a lot of photographs and then look at the set and see if there’s a theme that I can pull from the images. There may be trial and error, images included and discarded, multiple shoots of the subject, … Sometimes these series are weeks or months in the making as the ideas and images form in my head & the digital darkroom…

Other series, like this one, Garden in Winter, seem to have a life of their own. I feel like I was just helping the images into being.

Garden in Winter is a series of black & white botanical photographs (with soft sepia tones) taken February 28, 2010 in the JC Raulston Arboretum (Raleigh, NC).

See more of this series in my flickr photostream and my etsy photography shop.

From the wonderful weekend day trip to the beach. Spring please come soon…

polaroids

ocean & seagull. polaroid

Today was heaven.

I’m working a lot of weekends for the day job these days. Blech. So much work to do. Trying to be thankful for the paycheck.

And the cold & gray of February is getting to be a bit much. We’ve had just a couple of snows of a few inches each– which is kind-of a lot for us (Raleigh, NC). Most days have just been blah– cold, gray, yuck– I am so ready for sunshine and warmth!

Today I was off work and the temps were in the 60′s!!! My wonderful husband drove with me to Wrightsville Beach (just outside of Wilmington NC) for the day. It’s about a 2 hour drive– not too bad for a day trip.

I shot lots of polaroids, a few pics with the holga, and a few with the dslr with a lensbaby. I left all the expensive glass in my camera bag… it just didn’t feel like the day for it.

Hope your day was as wonderful as mine.

Dream of the Jetty (no. 9110)

Enamored by the sense of familiar and fleeting and wishing to leave something for the viewer to complete, I am exploring blur in my images. I think my usual (most automatic) style is maybe a bit tight, linear, graphic… I’m trying another path with these soft, dreamlike, out-of-focus and blurred images.

For some stunning work, please see Frederic Desmot’s Sombre series on flickr.

Some black & white photographs from the Water & Sky series:

Rain on the Ocean #2 (No. 8752)

Rain on the Ocean (No. 8762)

Jetty (No. 8721)

See more on my flickr photostream & in my etsy shop.

More work from the Water & Sky series:

Calm (No. 8823)

Water & Sky (No. 8549)

Water & Clouds (No. 9251)

See more on my flickr photostream & in my etsy shop.